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Which websites are visited by patients and what reliability is given to sources of medical information? Volume 16, issue 2, Février 2020

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Authors
1 Département de Médecine Générale, Faculté de médecine, Université de Strasbourg
2 UNISIMES, Faculté de médecine, Université de Strasbourg
* Correspondance

As the Internet offers more or less reliable sources of medical information for patients, we have evaluated their research practices on the Internet. 955 patients from Bas-Rhin medical offices were randomly recruited to answer a questionnaire concerning their Internet use practices in the medical field. The most visited sites are Doctissimo.fr (50.5%) and Wikipedia.org (45.8%), sites of great public notoriety, yet deemed less reliable (6.0 and 6.3/10) than sites government such as Ameli-sante.fr or Sante.gouv.fr (7,7 and 7,4/10). The attending physician remains the reference for patients in terms of health (8.8/10), despite the search for a second medical opinion. His involvement could help improve these practices.